THE RELIGIOUS ALLEGIANCE OF LONDON'S RULING ELITE 1520 - 1603 DAVID J. HICKMAN THESIS SUBMITTED FOR PhD IN HISTORY, SEPTEMBER 1995 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 1 fc\ (Lc ) t V. THE RELIGIOUS ALLEGIANCE OF LONDON'S RULING ELITE, 1520-1603 This thesis analyses the role played by the ruling elite of London in the City's religious development during the Reformation. The contribution of London's rulers is placed within the broader context of the English Reformation. The central focus is the changing religious profile of the City lite from 1520-1603. Wills provide the core source material, in conjunction with data from parish records and the archives of the Corporation of London. Changes to the religious profile of the rulers are discussed in the context of the corporate identity of the lite, and in terms of the role of individual rulers within London's parishes and craft guilds. Stress is placed upon the importance of a relatively small number of well- placed individuals in influencing the course of religious change within the Ci ty. A small group within the lower strata of the lite had accepted a broadly evangelical religious position by the early 1530s. As a small, but socially significant body, this group supported the implementation of the Edwardian Reformation. By the 1560s a significant Protestant presence at the upper levels of City and parish government secured London's acceptance of the forms of worship required by the Elizabethan Church of England. The evangelical group within the lite aided the dissemination of evangelical religious ideas, while lite social roles ensured that some parishes experienced a 'Reformation from within' rather than simply one imposed from above. At the same time, the emergence of new patterns of public religious behaviour in the later sixteenth century permitted a wide range of religious positions to co-exist within a common complex of shared 2 civic values and attitudes, preventing serious divisions along religious lines. In this regard London's rulers are compared with ruling groups in other major European cities. The continuing corporate unity of the ruling group thus owed less to religious conservatism or the outright victory of puritan ideals, than to participation in a Church whose outward forms of religious expression allowed for considerable latitude of religious belief. 3 CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS 6 INTRODUCTION: Religion as a Cultural System 7 CHAPTER ONE: The Religion of London's Rulers 1520-1603: Problems and Methodologies 29 CHAPTER TWO: The Rulers of London under Henry VIII, 1520-1547 64 CHAPTER THREE: The Rulers of London under Edward and Mary 137 CHAPTER FOUR: The Rulers of London 1558-1580 195 CHAPTER FIVE: The Rulers of London 1581-1603 260 CHAPTER SIX: The Reformation in London in National and International Context 295 CONCLUS IONS 319 BIBLIOGRAPHY 324 4 TABLES ONE: Percentage of Rulers' Wills with Religious Bequests within Two Years if the Dissolution of London's Religious Houses and Chantries 84 TWO: Catholic Bequests in the Wills of London's Rulers 119 THREE: Religious Profile of the Henrician Rulers 120 FOUR: Religious Profile of the Henrician Aldermen 122 FIVE: Religious Profile of the Henrician Commoners 122 SIX: Religious Profile of the Henrician Commoners by Decadal Sample 123 SEVEN: Religious Bequests 1547-1553 153 EIGHT: Religious Bequests 1553-1559 187 NINE: Religious Profile of Rulers 1547-1558 188 TEN: Religious Profile of Aldermen 1547-1558 188 ELEVEN: Religious Profile of Commoners 1554-1556 189 TWELVE: Religious Profile of Aldermen 1558-1580 250 THIRTEEN: Religious Profile of Commoners 1564-1566 251 FOURTEEN: Religious Profile of Commoners 1564-1576 251 FIFTEEN: Religious Profile of Aldermen 1581-1603 283 SIXTEEN: Religious Profile of Commoners 1584-1586 284 SEVENTEEN: Religious Profile of Commoners 1594-1596 284 APPENDICES ONE: Aldermen and Common Councillors 1520-1547 127 TWO: Aldermen and Common Councillors 1547-1558 190 THREE: Aldermen and Common Councillors 1558-1580 253 FOUR: Aldermen and Common Councillors 1581-1603 286 FIvE The 1Zi.1ers o Lcncj r (O ICo3 Inside ck Cover 5 ABBREVIATIONS APC Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed. J. R. Dasent (1890-1907) CLRO Corporation of London Record Office CSP Dom. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, ed. R. Lemon et al. (1856-72). CSP Sp. Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, ed. G. A. Bergenroth et al., 13 vols. (1862-1964). GL Guildhall Library GLRO Greater London Record Office L&P Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R. S. Brodie, 21 vols. (1862-1932). PRO Public Record Office Re,nembrancia Analytical Index to the Series of Records known as the Remembrancia preserved among the Archives of the City of London. A.D. 1579-1664 (London, 1878). 6 INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM The last three decades have seen the work of the revisionist school of historians assume a prominent place in the current historiography of the English Reformation. Developed in reaction to a traditional historical orthodoxy, which is traced back to the work of the martyrologist John Foxe, revisionism rejects 'Whiggishly' progressive interpretations of the Reformation that stress the inevitable victory of Protestantism over the corrupt degeneracy of the medieval church. 1 In particular, it is the relationship between the political and doctrinal manifestations of the Reformation that the revisionists have been at pains to reassess. Geoffrey Dickens and Claire Cross, among others, are held up as representative of the tradiftnal historical view, characterised by revisionists as the 'fast Reformation from below' school. Dickens stresses the early popularity of evangelical beliefs among the laity, particularly itinerant textile workers and scripture-reading gentry. 2 He emphasises the extent to which such beliefs spread ahead of official endorsement, a process which a poorly educated and inadequately trained parochial clergy could do little to prevent, and which had become irreversible by the time of Mary's accession. We might note, however, as Dickens himself points out, that his views on this subject are perhaps less extreme than they have been portrayed by some of his critics. 3 At the same time the work of Geoffrey Elton and Peter Clark, concentrating on government and administration, is regarded by revisionists as the 'political' counterpart 1 C. Haigh, 'The Recent Historiography of the English Reformation', in C. Haigh (ed.), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 19-33. 2 C. f. D. Cressy. Literacy and the Social Order (Cambridge, 1980). A. G. Dickens, 'The Early Expansion of Protestantism in England 1520-1558', Archly flr Reformationsgeschichte 78 (1987), pp. 188-90; idem, The English Reformation, 2nd. ed. (London, 1989), pp. 325-34. 7 to Dickens, the 'fast reformation from above' school.4 In these closely interlinked approaches the Marian Catholic restoration is regarded as an attempt to turn back the clock by political means, a reaction against a prevailing religious trend, the future of which was ultimately secured by the accession of Elizabeth i. Revisionist objections to such interpretations stress the extent to which the pre- Reformation Church met the religious and judicial requirements of the laity, and deny the existence of large scale lay dissatisfaction with the established church. In this context, Ronald Hutton has stressed the dynamic nature of late medieval religion, in that through constant change it responded to the needs of a literate laity, while the requirements of lay religion equally influenced the theology of the clerical authorities.6 Thus, revisionists draw attention to the popular appeal of the pre- Reformation church at all levels of society, minimise the influence of religious dissenters such as the Lollards, and emphasise the active M. C. Cross, Church and People 1450-1660 (London, 1977); A. G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509-1558 (Oxford, 1959); idem, 'Heresy and the Origins of English Protestantism', in J. S. Bromley and E. H. Kossman (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands, 2 (London, 1964), pp. 47-66; idem, The English Reformation, 2nd. ed. (London, 1989); J. E. Oxley, The Reformation in Essex to the Death of Mary (Manchester, 1965); K. G. Powell, The Marian Martyrs and Reformation in Bristol (Bristol, 1972); G. Elton, Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972); idem, Reform and Reformation: England 1509-1558 (London, 1977); P. Clark, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics and Society in Kent, 1500-1640 (Hassocks, Sussex, 1977); J. F. Davis, Heresy and Reformation in the South- East of England, 1520-1559 (London, 1983); Haigh 'Recent Historiography of the English Reformation'. E. g. '[Mary's] government was haunted by the ghost of her father; intent upon the legal undoing of his legalism it forgot that in the last resort religious teaching mattered infinitely more than ecclesiastical legislation. The apparent religious and cultural sterility of these years has often been observed...to an overwhelming extent English Catholic opinion was still traditionalist rather than progressive or adventurous': Dickens, English Reformation, pp. 311, 315. 6 R. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994); idem, 'The English Reformation and the Evidence of Folklore', Past and Present 148 (1995), pp. 89-116; M. Aston, 'Popular Religious Movements in the Middle Ages', in idem, Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350-1600 (London, 1993), pp. 1-26. 8 involvement of the higher Catholic clergy in maintaining standards of pastoral care at a level adequate to meet the demands of an increasingly literate laity. 7 Lay anticlericalism, arising from disputes between London merchants and Cardinal Wolsey and the professional interest of the common lawyers in restricting the areas of legal competence claimed by the church courts, is thus socially localised and politicised by revisionists.